For what it's worth: a friend who works for the Pens just told my wife Thursday night that the Pens are planning an announcment for next week that she termed "very good news." She is also currently looking to purchase a house right now.

Pitts wrote:For what it's worth: a friend who works for the Pens just told my wife Thursday night that the Pens are planning an announcment for next week that she termed "very good news." She is also currently looking to purchase a house right now.

Pitts wrote:For what it's worth: a friend who works for the Pens just told my wife Thursday night that the Pens are planning an announcment for next week that she termed "very good news." She is also currently looking to purchase a house right now.

Pitts wrote:For what it's worth: a friend who works for the Pens just told my wife Thursday night that the Pens are planning an announcment for next week that she termed "very good news." She is also currently looking to purchase a house right now.

It is just me, or is anyone else seeing "Mr. Barden" as an emerging rat in this whole matter.

You are not alone in questioning Mr. Barden. My favorite bit of history is that when a gambling license was being handed out in Detroit, he insisted that it should go to a "local" person - that being HIM. ha ha He obviously had no such sympathies for Mario Lemieux in the process here!

I didn't think he'd be able to do it, but damned if Don hasn't found a way to try to queer this deal and save that $7.5 million a year. It's awful nice of him to come to the meeting and negotiate about redevelopment rights, but no matter how much money he's putting up for the arena he shouldn't get dime one of parking revenue from its parking facilities, for two reasons:

1. What he's being asked to put up is a tiny fraction of what he's going to earn with that slots parlor
2. When he agreed "in principle" to Plan B, he wasn't getting any parking revenue in exchange for his $7.5 million per year, and I happen to believe that people ought to be held to the terms of their committments

I will readilly admit I know absolutely nothing about this whole process,
but I am gladly speculating on my part.........

Having said that, is it possible that the parking issue was raised so Barden
and Rendell have a bargaining chip? EX: "Ok Mr. Lemieux, I'll give you all
of the parking revenue for let's say, 20% of the redevelopment rights."

If anyone has center ice and got the Toronto feed, they mentioned that
the league was lead to believe that a deal was going to get done on Thursday evening, and that the next 24-48 hours would be "crucial" for the
team's future.

grrr. They need to put all parties involved in a room until this thing gets done. Either that or put me in a round rubber room cuz I am ready to go crazy. This has gone on way too long and its gettting on my nerves. End of rant....

Pitts wrote:For what it's worth: a friend who works for the Pens just told my wife Thursday night that the Pens are planning an announcment for next week that she termed "very good news." She is also currently looking to purchase a house right now.

Three Stars wrote:Don't post entire articles on the board. It could get us in trouble with copyright law. Just post a paragraph or two (or edit your post accordingly).

I know that's the policy, but honestly, it's BS. Just so you know...The problems arise when it's posted and a site is charging to view it. This board is not charging...and I seriously doubt the PG is going to give a Penguins fan board crap over it. I help mod a VERY popular DVD board, and we post stuff all the time, and we haven't heard a peep out of anyone...and never will.

Actually, RJ put the policy in place AFTER being contacted by someone over an entire article being posted while back.

The P-G is pushing "Mellon Arena memories" like the demolition has already been scheduled, so they're obviously confident things will work out. Then again, they're a 50% bet to have gotten the new Steelers head coach wrong, so who knows what to think.

grrr. They need to put all parties involved in a room until this thing gets done. Either that or put me in a round rubber room cuz I am ready to go crazy. This has gone on way too long and its gettting on my nerves. End of rant....

We need to get ryan one of those rooms with a rubber floor like they've got in that Bud Light commercial. Just make sure the dog doesn't jump off the chair and onto the floor.

I picked Mike Tomlin as the next Steelers coach over a week ago when all the Pittsburgh sportscasters were picking Russ Grimm. (Email to prove it.) I told Eddie O. he would be the next coach of the Pens 5 days before it was announced, too, if that counts for anything. I'm not a big BSer or lobbyist, but I know this . . . Mario Lemieux MADE hockey in this town, stayed here to raise his family, has done much charitable work, gave us his heart and soul, was one of the greatest players ever, and kept the team here this long. The fact that the local politicians turned their backs on a great man like this is bad enough. NOW Rendell brings a guy in from Detroit and sets him above Mario. If YOU were Mario Lemieux after all of this, WHY WOULD YOU STILL STAY IN PITTSBURGH?
PS THERE WOULD BE NO PLAN B OF ANY KIND WITHOUT MARIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jasmine wrote:I picked Mike Tomlin as the next Steelers coach over a week ago when all the Pittsburgh sportscasters were picking Russ Grimm. (Email to prove it.) I told Eddie O. he would be the next coach of the Pens 5 days before it was announced, too, if that counts for anything. I'm not a big BSer or lobbyist, but I know this . . . Mario Lemieux MADE hockey in this town, stayed here to raise his family, has done much charitable work, gave us his heart and soul, was one of the greatest players ever, and kept the team here this long. The fact that the local politicians turned their backs on a great man like this is bad enough. NOW Rendell brings a guy in from Detroit and sets him above Mario. If YOU were Mario Lemieux after all of this, WHY WOULD YOU STILL STAY IN PITTSBURGH?PS THERE WOULD BE NO PLAN B OF ANY KIND WITHOUT MARIO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was going to wait to comment after draftnik piped in with his made up figures.
I do not think anything said is a sign that the discussions are not going well. I will say, that Rendell made a huge error in bringing up the ten million and the parking issues, then claiming he does not want to negotiate in the media.
Burkle and Lemieux are now on the defensive - my guess they respond with another trip to KC.

Zscout wrote:I was going to wait to comment after draftnik piped in with his made up figures.I do not think anything said is a sign that the discussions are not going well. I will say, that Rendell made a huge error in bringing up the ten million and the parking issues, then claiming he does not want to negotiate in the media. Burkle and Lemieux are now on the defensive - my guess they respond with another trip to KC.

Rendell going to the media shows the state is cracking. He who goes public first already has lost.....

Zscout wrote:I was going to wait to comment after draftnik piped in with his made up figures.I do not think anything said is a sign that the discussions are not going well. I will say, that Rendell made a huge error in bringing up the ten million and the parking issues, then claiming he does not want to negotiate in the media. Burkle and Lemieux are now on the defensive - my guess they respond with another trip to KC.

I was going to wait to comment after draftnik piped in with his made up figures. I do not think anything said is a sign that the discussions are not going well. I will say, that Rendell made a huge error in bringing up the ten million and the parking issues, then claiming he does not want to negotiate in the media. Burkle and Lemieux are now on the defensive - my guess they respond with another trip to KC.

Z,

I agree with you when you say that you don't think what transpired this past week is a sign that negotiations aren't going well. As I've said before, it sounds to me like they are in agreement or close to agreement on what are far and away the two main sticking points in this negotiation - the control of the hockey and non-hockey revenue streams at the new building and the contribution to the financing plan from the team.

Onorato has been saying for almost two months now that the elected officials are prepared to offer the team control of all hockey and non-hockey revenue streams at the new building. The only exception to that may be parking, which may be split with Barden, although that's being negotiated right now. Even if they split parking revenues, this deal would still make them significantly more money over the life of the lease than the one in KC would, where they would only control at most 50% of the revenues.

The team's contribution was initially supposed to be $2.9 million a year for 30 years, plus the forfeiture of naming right worth $1.1 milion a year for 30 years. Two media outlets reported on Friday that the team contribution may have been cut to $1.5 million a year for 30 years. That leads me to believe that they're close on a figure there as well, as the Pens have alluded in the past that they'd be open to contributing something at a reduced rate from the initial $4.0 million a year.

As I've said, if the revenues here are comparable to what they would be bringing in in KC - and they should be, given that KC and Pittsburgh are relatively comparable markets - they stand to make a lot more money over the life of the lease here than they do in KC...possibly twice as much. You could be talking about a difference of hundreds of millions of dollars. What they now seem to be haggling over are ancillary costs that would represent a mere fraction of the revenues they would still stand to make.

In other words, even if they disagree with the allocation of some of these costs (especially the relatively short-term costs), I can't imagine that they would kill the deal over them because they could be making so much more here from the comprehensive control of the revenues. It just doesn't seem like it would be worth it in the long term.

I do think you might have your timeline messed up a little. Correct me if I'm wrong, but all parties after the first meeting said they don't want to negotiate through the media, and THEN Rendell spouted off after this second meeting about some of these new issues.

What worries me is stats that I've read indicating that KC is a community very much on the rise while Pittsburgh is on the decline. When you talk about the next 30 years, will the NHL or anyone take this into consideration?

BeanPole wrote:What worries me is stats that I've read indicating that KC is a community very much on the rise while Pittsburgh is on the decline. When you talk about the next 30 years, will the NHL or anyone take this into consideration?

False. KC would be the 3rd smallest NHL market in the US. It does not parallel Denver which had a meteoric rise in metro area population after the NHL left their market.

BeanPole wrote:What worries me is stats that I've read indicating that KC is a community very much on the rise while Pittsburgh is on the decline. When you talk about the next 30 years, will the NHL or anyone take this into consideration?

These stats mean nothing. If you went on rising community alone, Houston far outpaces Pittsburgh....

Tikkanen wrote:Well, I work with a copyright lawyer on a regular basis, and I'm just speaking from experience. It's a public forum message board, and it's free to discuss things that are printed in the press...I'm betting that whoever contacted had zero basis under the DCMA to do so, and was axe-grinding more than anything. But, as I said, I know it's the policy, I just feel it's BS. Not that I really do care...

On the otherhand, there is the issue of bandwidth, and that does take up more space and whatnot...I know it adds up.

That's the DMCA, and it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not the site is charging for the information. You're not allowed to re-distribute copyrighted information without the permission of the copyright holder, period.

BEANPOLE wrote...What worries me is stats that I've read indicating that KC is a community very much on the rise while Pittsburgh is on the decline. When you talk about the next 30 years, will the NHL or anyone take this into consideration?----

False, though this is a common misconception. There is strong evidence that Pittsburgh is in the midst of rather remarkable turnaround cycle.
That is not to say that the recent decision by MFI to re-locate to New York wasn't a blow. But it's a blow that experts expect the city to recover from.

One wonders how Kansas City looks without Sprint? Telecommunications is a VERY risky industry.
Sprint has done very well so far employing what most analysts agree have been rather risky business practices. And, so far, their gambles (a nationwide fiber optic network -considered foolhardy by most) have paid off. But KC has given ENORMOUS tax breaks to Sprint and the the financial well being of the area is pinned to Sprint's success or failure. And should Sprint falter, the blow to KC would be profound. I'm not saying this is going to happen but would merely like to point out that Pittsburgh has survived an even greater blow to become a national leader in tech and health-care, when big steel left en masse'

One would assume Pittsburgh's rosy outlook is a part of the local and state position and presentation.

Believe or not, you can thank the pols for the turnaround.
Reasons for this positive outlook are too detailed to delve into here, but here are a couple of nice generalities.